MC2 Director: Doug Kurtz

Members of the Department of Mathematical Sciences work with faculty and staff from the College of Education to help middle school mathematics teachers improve their knowledge and understanding of the mathematics they teach in a state-funded program called Mathematically Connected Communities (MC2). Beginning in 2005, this group has held summer academies around the state to support teacher professional development in mathematics. The academies are designed for middle- and high-school teachers who are interested in enhancing their own conceptual understanding of the mathematics they teach. Focusing on New Mexico's Content and Process Standard for mathematics, teachers "unpack" the mathematics of conceptually-based mathematics lessons that start at the middle-grade level and extend into high school- and college-level mathematics. Participants discuss their mathematical thinking through writing and classroom discussion. Teachers engage in developing standards-based lessons that address misconceptions that are common among middle grade students and support understanding and multiple ways of thinking about mathematics.

In 2009 a subgroup of the MC2 group from both Mathematical Sciences and the College of Education received funding for MC2-LIFT, Mathematically Connected Communities — Leadership Institutes for Teachers. This 5-year program will train two cohorts of 30 public school teachers each through a two-year sequence of math and education courses and other professional development in order to train the teachers to be teacher leaders in their schools and districts. Courses for the cohorts will be offered as a pair, one math course and one education course, and will have mathematics and pedagogy tightly integrated. A team of mathematicians and educators will develop the mathematics and education courses, and each pair of courses will be team taught by a mathematician and an educator. Furthermore, teachers will gain a new lens for learning mathematics by studying how concepts connect within and across grade levels (vertical articulation). Teachers will gain a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts by understanding these connections. They will understand how the content progresses throughout the K-12 continuum and how the concepts in various grade levels relate to one another.

One of the unique and exciting aspects of these academies is the tight integration of the content and the pedagogy. The pedagogy sessions are based on mathematical problems and the mathematical content is designed around the mathematics standards. All of this material has been developed through collaboration involving mathematicians and education specialists. Interested teachers can earn undergraduate or graduate credit in mathematics and graduate credit in education. For more information, visit the MC2 and MC2-LIFT web sites http://mc2.nmsu.edu and http://mc2lift.nmsu.edu